Substance 3D News: Painter saves time and hassle by automatically updating assets, plus tips from game artists
Tired of having to manually update an asset every time you or a teammate makes a change? You’ll love Substance Painter’s new auto-update feature.
This month, we also have in-depth tips from 3D artists working on top games like Silent Hill 2 and Helldivers 2, advice on the art of the texturing process and an exclusive asset collection.
Stay in sync with Auto-Update Resources in Substance 3D Painter
“Sweet!”
”Yeeeeesssssss!”
“Love this”
“This is the feature I was waiting for!”
We were thrilled to see the enthusiasm for the new Auto-Update Resources feature for Substance 3D Painter, released at GDC. Community members who have tried it say it’s a game-changer.
Most 3D artists have experienced the frustration of wasting valuable time manually reloading textures and filters after they or someone they work with make a change to the asset. The Auto Updater addresses this head-on. Simply enable automatic updates for your assets panel (and optionally for resources already used in your project) to see external changes reflected in Painter instantly. It works with imported images, PSDs, Illustrator art, and materials. This means that your libraries and open projects can always reflect the latest version of assets without you having to raise a finger. It also intelligently handles filter parameters, ensuring your custom settings stay safe as you iterate.
With Auto-Update Resources, you’ll spend less time finding, reloading, and reapplying updated textures or filters and more time in the creative process. Give it a try and let us know what you think!
Learn how to set up and use the Auto-Update Resources in Substance 3D Painter
Creating game environments made easier with Substance 3D Designer
Over the past few months, we have released Signature Collections showcasing some of the amazing texture creations from a variety of 3D artists. Niki Marinov joined us for Substance Days at GDC 2025 to share how he used Substance 3D Designer to create his Signature Collection of parametric textures. Inspired by Bulgarian architecture, the collection can be used as a playable 3D environment in Unreal Engine. Watch his session or check out the materials now in the Substance 3D Assets library.
Silent Hill 2: Remaking a horror icon
When it comes to remaking nostalgic games, it is important to leverage modern technology and techniques while preserving the nostalgic atmosphere and depth of the original game. The Blooper Team accepted this challenge in making Silent Hill 2, a sequel to the 1999 survival horror game. They introduced a range of improvements, including more intimate gameplay and angles, expanded exploration with dynamic environments, and enhanced combat AI while maintaining iconic monster designs. This was carefully balanced with faithful recreations of memorable locations and puzzles.
The team used Substance 3D Painter and Unreal Engine to enrich the visual storytelling with detailed textures and symbolism, ensuring the remake honored the game's legacy while feeling fresh for modern audiences. Give it a watch!
Layer-by-layer: Texturing with intent in Adobe Substance 3D
Substance Days also showcased the texturing technique of Digital Domain 3D artist, Kasita Wonowidjojo. Wonowidjojo covered her journey into 3D as well as her texturing workflow in Substance 3D Painter and showcased how to efficiently achieve “80 percent quality” to validate a concept and avoid time over-polishing before you decide on a path. In the talk, she also emphasized a layered texturing process, building materials step-by-step using base layers, procedural noise, masks, and generators, while grounding decisions in real-world references and material properties. Wonowidjojo also covered a range of techniques to bring surfaces to life and highlighted the value of James Gurney’s color zone theory to make skin textures look more realistic. Check it out!
Helldivers 2: Diving into biome material creation with a tiny team
Go behind the scenes of Helldivers 2’s richly detailed planetary environments with Romain Lemaire, the sole material artist at Arrowhead Game Studios. Lemaire discussed how he developed a streamlined material pipeline to tackle the challenge of crafting diverse biomes with limited resources. From early prototypes to the final production-ready workflow, Lemaire revealed the technical and artistic strategies that ensured he maintained consistency and quality across multiple environments. Through the combination of using procedural tools in Substance 3D and various authoring techniques, Lemaire was able to efficiently handle the material needs of an entire game world. Take a look!